Blame the architect and the dolt who hired him. A good design should accommodate the culture that is truly valuable; this is a subtle part of design history that has many precedents. Michaelangelo and Bramante got it right when they designed Saint Peter's basilica, then came Maderno and the Pope who hired him with all their Baroque habits, and they put a big rectangular facade in front of it, hiding the building in all of its splendor. There should be a market for good office architecture, but we keep on moving into the same types of buildings designed by architects who never spend an hour trying to understand the culture of the people who will inhabit them.

9:56 pm August 5, 2013

Craig wrote:

The author can't keep his eye on the ball, so he blames his new building! I'd say he hasn't learned a damned thing. Yet.

1:10 am August 6, 2013

Alan Brown wrote:

I think it makes sense to charge departments for their space and furniture. And make compensation dependent on how frugal the department is. That pressure was always present when the company was a startup.

3:17 am August 6, 2013

Nick wrote:

So basically what the author is saying is that credit cards are bad because they get you into debt so you should avoid them.

Which is total crap.. The people running this business were morons, the new building itself didn't make any decisions on giving everyone an office and so on.

This is natural selection in the business world and I have no sympathy for them failing.

3:59 am August 6, 2013

Bob H wrote:

Agree with the other posters here, clearly it was the management that failed not the building. I have moved office and renovated around staff, moving was far more pleasant and because the management of the process was good it wasn't too damaging to the business.

SuperMac was failed by its management.

10:34 am August 7, 2013

Anon Ymous wrote:

The "insidious" problems would have all been resolved by hiring and working with an interior designer/architect who understood, or at the very least asked, what the company culture was and to then work around it. Clearly the author tried to mold the company into a building, and duh, that didn't work.

Moron management can destroy a culture. You should avoid them at all costs.

5:16 pm August 7, 2013

Silicon Valley Veteran wrote:

We needed to move out of our house (after turning the kids bedrooms into offices, etc), and looked into the "executive suites" option. They will only talk in "number of people" vs square feet. I *finally* got them to tell me how much space was their "six person" office, and it was 475 sq ft!! And they wanted $3,000 a month! You could call it a scam but you would definitely recognize their name (it rhymes with "egregious").

We found a good class B space for $1.50 a square foot, which is good for Silicon Valley.

Good luck out there!

5:23 pm August 7, 2013

Roger Draper wrote:

It's not WHERE you work that gets you in trouble; it's WHO you work with and for. Plenty of great companies go up-market in facilities and don't miss a beat. It's when your "A" players hire B's, and B's hire C's that the slide begins. Google, Twitter, Apple, Facebook, et. al. enjoy phenomenal digs. No slippin' and slidin' there. Hire slow, fire fast.

9:48 am August 8, 2013

Lisa wrote:

1. Not good to generalize from a sample of one.
2. Hire a building manager on a consulting basis.
3. Extroverts love cubicles - more time for socializing.

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For aspiring or actual entrepreneurs, The Accelerators is an online archive of discussion among startup mentors– entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists. Although the blog is no longer being updated, its content lives here and you can see an archive of its tweets through June 2015 @wsjstartup.